I just downloaded blender from http://graphicall.org/856. That build of Blender is supposed to work with CUDA, but I can't seem to get CUDA to work. Under the render settings initially, I don't see a "Device" drop-down. I can open the Blender User Preferences window, in which I see a "Compute Device" section. Under there, there is only "None", and "OpenCL":

If OpenCL worked, I would have been content, but rendering in OpenCL only results in a black image (although it is quite fast ). As you can tell, I'm pretty new to this, and I'm not sure whether I skipped an important step. I've searched online, but couldn't find a solution.

How can I enable CUDA on my GPU (which is an nVidia 650m)? Thanks for your help.

I went here: http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-downloads, and downloaded for steps 1 and 2, but not 3. I can try that now, but I don't think I need the SDK? And once the drivers are installed, should I see the CUDA option in the user preferences?

Its odd for me as well, the CUDA comes up on my computer but it creates a black screen just like the openCL did to him? I also have the openCL and it too creates a black screen.
Could it just be the nvidia graphics card having problems with blender?

Jedijds wrote:Its odd for me as well, the CUDA comes up on my computer but it creates a black screen just like the openCL did to him? I also have the openCL and it too creates a black screen.
Could it just be the nvidia graphics card having problems with blender?

So how did you get the CUDA option in the first place? It looks like you're a step ahead of me.

Did you get any special build of Blender with a CUDA-enabled cycles bundled? Or did you just get the regular build from blender.org for you OS?

Okay, I downloaded a copy of the newest Blender (2.64), but I didn't have any luck getting CUDA to work. I did, however see a significant difference in how images rendered with OpenCL. Here's a scene rendered with CPU:

And here is that same scene rendered with OpenCL enabled:

I'm not sure if this is due to the lack of good OpenCL support by cycles. Anyway, I still didn't see the CUDA option, even though I have the drivers installed on my computer. Anyone know what's going on here?

Iv always had the option when I got blender and still have it running 2.62, but it just doesn’t work. I had geek squad install all my drivers and cards. Could it be my vista operating system? Heard blender had some problems with it.

Just as dublinus above, in User Preferences there is only the OpenCL option. However, I can render some of the Cycles examples in the 261 Cycles demo's - except the Hearts example which comes out exactly as the white render by dublinus here above.

I can't tell whether the rendering is using the GPU or not. It's a bit confusing!

I have the same problem with this card on Blender 2.64a... if i use CPU and not GPU Compute, textures are ok when rendering and also on the 3D viewport but if i change to GPU Compute, textures are gone!!! all the textures change like no material!!!!
Are there any step or configuration on Blender to change this situation? or is there any other option that i need to choose on node editor?